Yahoo Japan and DeNA create social gaming alliance

The Japanese social game market is taking off. Today, Yahoo Japan and mobile social game company DeNA have created an alliance in social games.

The companies say that the Japanese market has potential for rapid growth, not only in mobile games but also games on PCs. Together, they plan to launch a PC-based social game platform, Yahoo Mobage, late this summer.

DeNA’s Moba-ge-town mobile gaming portal has more than 18 million registered members. It expects a lot of support from third-party game developers who will make games for the platform and will make tools for developing the games available early this summer. With this new platform, players will be able to play the same games on the PC or mobile phone. And publishers can develop and promote games on PCs or phones. Players can use their Yahoo Japan login to make purchases on the Yahoo Mobage platform.

In another sign of the vibrancy of Japan’s social-gaming sector, VentureBeat reported on Monday that Zynga, a leading U.S. social-games maker, and Softbank, a top tech-investment firm in Japan, are exploring an alliance.

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